Act One: An­ti-ag­ing team at Ju­ve­nes­cence adds $50M to the cache as it builds steam on de­vel­op­ment ef­forts

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

When Ju­ve­nes­cence got start­ed a year ago, the an­ti-ag­ing biotech had some big names at­tached but not big cash. To­day, they’re start­ing to se­ri­ous­ly make up for the gap.

Greg Bai­ley

The com­pa­ny, guid­ed by De­clan Doogan, Greg Bai­ley, An­nal­isa Jenk­ins, Jim Mel­lon and oth­ers, says it has round­ed up $50 mil­lion from an un­spec­i­fied set of “founders, in­sid­ers, in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors and fam­i­ly of­fices.” That brings the to­tal raise now to $63 mil­lion.

De­clan Doogan

Ju­ve­nes­cence has been build­ing a set of port­fo­lio col­lab­o­ra­tors that in­cludes In­sil­i­co Med­i­cine, Alex Zha­voronkov’s AI group that just raised some mil­lions of its own. They have al­so struck up a part­ner­ship with the Buck In­sti­tute for Re­search on Ag­ing, and plan to add to some ad­di­tion­al pacts lat­er in the year.

Bai­ley, the CEO of Ju­ve­nes­cence, was one of the ear­ly back­ers of Medi­va­tion, where he was a board di­rec­tor for 7 years — be­fore Pfiz­er stepped in to buy the biotech for $14 bil­lion. De­clan Doogan, a for­mer top Pfiz­er re­search ex­ec, came in as a prin­ci­pal to the new ven­ture along­side bil­lion­aire Mel­lon and Bai­ley.

An­nal­isa Jenk­ins

They’ve brought on An­nal­isa Jenk­ins as the COO. Jenk­ins played a ma­jor role at Bris­tol-My­ers, lat­er jump­ing to head of R&D at Mer­ck KGaA and then on to run her own biotech, which ran in­to trou­ble with the lead pro­gram and was bought out by Ul­tragenyx.

And they’ve all been think­ing big.

Jim Mel­lon

Like a num­ber of up-and-com­ing biotechs, Ju­ve­nes­cence is fo­cused on a med­ley of ther­a­peu­tics, di­ag­nos­tics and de­vices that can start to bat back the ef­fects of ag­ing, of­fer­ing bet­ter liv­ing to a longer life. It’s not go­ing to be easy or fast. But the part­ners def­i­nite­ly want it to be im­pact­ful.

“I think this is go­ing to be the biggest deal I’ve ever done,” Bai­ley told me back in Ju­ly. “It will need repet­i­tive fi­nanc­ing. Five to $600 mil­lion was raised for Medi­va­tion. As we hit in­flec­tion points, we will need to raise a dra­mat­ic amount of mon­ey.”

In an in­ter­view with the Fi­nan­cial Times, Mel­lon not­ed that the biotech plans to raise an­oth­er $100 mil­lion this year and then add on fresh funds from an IPO in 2019.

“We aim to have about 20 shots on this goal — longevi­ty sci­ence — and if we get two or three of them right, there will be a very good re­turn to share­hold­ers,” Mel­lon told the FT.

This isn’t a dra­mat­ic mon­ey sto­ry yet, but it’s pret­ty good for the first act.

AUTHOR

Editor & Founder

Pfiz­er’s Doug Gior­dano has $500M — and some ad­vice — to of­fer a cer­tain breed of 'break­through' biotech

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

So let’s say you’re running a cutting-edge, clinical-stage biotech, probably public, but not necessarily so, which could see some big advantages teaming up with some marquee researchers, picking up say $50 million to $75 million dollars in a non-threatening minority equity investment that could take you to the next level.

Doug Giordano might have some thoughts on how that could work out.

The SVP of business development at the pharma giant has helped forge a new fund called the Pfizer Breakthrough Growth Initiative. And he has $500 million of Pfizer’s money to put behind 7 to 10 — or so — biotech stocks that fit that general description.

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Is a pow­er­house Mer­ck team prepar­ing to leap past Roche — and leave Gilead and Bris­tol My­ers be­hind — in the race to TIG­IT dom­i­na­tion?

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Roche caused quite a stir at ASCO with its first look at some positive — but not so impressive — data for their combination of Tecentriq with their anti-TIGIT drug tiragolumab. But some analysts believe that Merck is positioned to make a bid — soon — for the lead in the race to a second-wave combo immuno-oncology approach with its own ambitious early-stage program tied to a dominant Keytruda.

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Jason Mast

Associate Editor

Legend Biotech, the Nanjing-based CAR-T developer, has raised $424 million on NASDAQ. The biotech had originally filed for a still-hefty $350 million, based on a range of $18-$20, but managed to fetch $23 per share, allowing them to well-eclipse the massive raises from companies like Allogene, Juno, Galapagos, though they’ll still fall a few dollars short of Moderna’s record-setting $600 million raise from 2018.

Recursion Pharmaceuticals

Salt Lake City, UT

As it hap­pened: A bid­ding war for an an­tibi­ot­ic mak­er in a mar­ket that has rav­aged its peers

Natalie Grover

Reporter

In a bewildering twist to the long-suffering market for antibiotics — there has actually been a bidding war for an antibiotic company: Tetraphase.

It all started back in March, when the maker of Xerava (an FDA approved therapy for complicated intra-abdominal infections) said it had received an offer from AcelRx for an all-stock deal valued at $14.4 million.

The offer was well-timed. Xerava was approved in 2018, four years after Tetraphase posted its first batch of pivotal trial data, and sales were nowhere near where they needed to be in order for the company to keep its head above water.

Amber Tong

Editor

Money has never been an issue for Everest Medicines. With an essentially open tab from their founders at C-Bridge Capital, the biotech has gone two and a half years racking up drug after drug, bringing in top exec after top exec, and issuing clinical update after update.

But now other investors want in — and they’re betting big.

Everest is closing its Series C at $310 million. The first $50 million comes from the Jiashan National Economic and Technological Development Zone; the remaining C-2 tranche was led by Janchor Partners, with RA Capital Management and Hillhouse Capital as co-leaders. Decheng Capital, GT Fund, Janus Henderson Investors, Rock Springs Capital, Octagon Investments all joined.

Por­tion of Neil Wood­ford’s re­main­ing in­vest­ments, in­clud­ing Nanopore, sold off for $284 mil­lion

Jason Mast

Associate Editor

It’s been precisely one year and one day since Neil Woodford froze his once-vaunted fund, and while a global pandemic has recently shielded him from the torrent of headlines, the fallout continues.

Today, the California-based patent licensing firm Acacia Research acquired the fund’s shares for 19 healthcare and biotech companies for $284 million. Those companies include shares for public and private companies and count some of Woodford’s most prominent bio-bets, such as Theravance Biopharma, Oxford Nanopore and Mereo Biopharma, according to Sky News, which first reported the sale. It won’t include shares for BenevelontAI, the machine learning biotech once valued at $2 billion.

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Lonza chairman Albert Baehny took his time headhunting a new CEO for the company, making it absolutely clear he wanted a Big Pharma or biotech CEO with a good long track record in the business for the top spot. In the end, he went with the gold standard, turning to Roche’s ranks to recruit Pierre-Alain Ruffieux for the job.

Ruffieux, a member of the pharma leadership team at Roche, spent close to 5 years at the company. But like a small army of manufacturing execs, he gained much of his experience at the other Big Pharma in Basel, remaining at Novartis for 12 years before expanding his horizons.

Natalie Grover

Reporter

Amber Tong

Editor

Jason Mast

Associate Editor

Another Big Pharma is entering the Covid-19 antibody hunt.

AbbVie has announced a collaboration with the Netherlands’ Utrecht University and Erasmus Medical Center and the Chinese-Dutch biotech Harbour Biomed to develop a neutralizing antibody that can treat Covid-19. The antibody, called 47D11, was discovered by AbbVie’s three partners, and AbbVie will support early preclinical work, while preparing for later preclinical and clinical development. Researchers described the antibody in Nature Communicationslast month.

At­las rais­es new $400M fund amid spree of VC rais­es. Here’s what they’ll spend it on

Jason Mast

Associate Editor

You can add another few hundred million to the now Montana-sized reservoir of cash biotech VCs have raised since the WHO declared Covid-19 a pandemic.

Atlas Venture, the prominent Kendall Square incubator, has raised $400 million for its twelfth biotech fund, their first in 3 years. After a string of mammothnewraisesfromothermajor VCs in April and May, the total pot now stands between $5 billion and $6 billion, depending on how you slice it.

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